With football season fully under way, even some lawmakers are getting in on the action.

For the past seven weeks, a handful of congressmen and women have braved brisk temperatures to practice football drills at 7 a.m. on the Mall near the Capitol. It was all to prepare for the 2011 Congressional Football Game, which took place on Wednesday at the Watkins Recreation Center and pitted members of Congress against the Capitol Police for a good cause — to raise money for Our Military Kids and the Capitol Police Memorial Fund. (The police won, 27-14.)

He had weeks of preparation under his belt, so we put one of the star players — Rep. Robert Dold — to the test for POLITICO’s latest “Game Changer” feature.

The challenge? Simple: three attempts to hit a target with a football at three different distances. Who won? Dold did let us in on what it’s like to hit the gridiron with his colleagues.

“It’s mostly rookie members, so there’s not a whole lot of hazing,” said Dold, who singled out Rep. Jon Runyan — a former NFL offensive tackle — as the team’s most valuable player.

“He is truly a game-changer. He’s one of the guys [who’s] out here every day, side by side with folks, [with] words of encouragement. The guy is no doubt a professional athlete,” Dold said.

Ken Harvey, a former NFL player himself who helped organize the Congressional Football Game, admitted that “physical ability may be lacking a little bit” among the politicos but said that “everybody is definitely trying to play and wants to be out there.”